Friday, October 29, 2010

Here’s another poem from my unpublished collection Excerpts from the Fairy Tale Files.

FAXTO: SNOW WHITEFROM: THE SEVEN DWARFS

Important message. Urgent. Read!Our sage advice you must now heed.Stay in the cottage. Don’t go out.Your evil stepmom’s hereabout.She’s dressed up as an ugly crone.She knows that you are home alone.Go lock the windows. Bolt the door.Hide in the closet. Please ignoreHer coy attempts to sell you things:Poison apples, combs, or rings.She’s bent on murder. She won’t restUntil her mirror says she’s best.Don’t let her trick you. Use you head!Or she’ll be fairest. You’ll be dead.

**********Here are links to previous Wild Rose Reader with witch poems and poetry and picture book recommendations for Halloween

Other children’s literature bloggers who’ll be participating in the session along with me are Sylvia Vardell of Poetry for Children and Tricia Stohr-Hunt of The Miss Rumphius Effect. The poet members of our panel will be Lee Bennett Hopkins, Jame Richards, and Marilyn Singer.

***Session Title:Poetry for Children and Teachers at Its Best: The 2009 Notable Poetry TitlesDate: November 19thSession/Time: C.20—12:30 pm to 1:45 pmFormat: PanelPanel Members:The NCTE Excellence in Poetry Committee

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At Blue Rose Girls, I have an original poem titled Look at the Man: A Poem Explaining Why Women with Mates Gain Weight, which I previously posted at my blog Political Verses.

Monday, October 25, 2010

In his post, Introducing Our New Guest Bloggers, today, Professor Turley wrote the following:

I am happy to report we will be implementing another one of your suggestions for improving the blog. Various people suggested a year ago that we have guest blogging to allow regulars a chance to make entries on the blog. With my upcoming speech in France, I thought it would be a great time to try this out for a week from October 31st to November 6th. I have selected three of our best known and most respected regulars: David Drumm (aka Nal), Elaine Magliaro (aka Elaine M) and Mark Esposito (aka Mespo).

You can read the rest of Professor Turley's post here.You can read Jonathan Turley's biography here.

Teachers have no First Amendment free-speech protection for curricular decisions they make in the classroom, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.

"Only the school board has ultimate responsibility for what goes on in the classroom, legitimately giving it a say over what teachers may (or may not) teach in the classroom," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, said in its opinion.

The decision came in the case of an Ohio teacher whose contract was not renewed in 2002 after community controversy over reading selections she assigned to her high school English classes. These included Siddhartha , by Herman Hesse, and a unit on book censorship in which the teacher allowed students to pick books from a list of frequently challenged works, and some students chose Heather Has Two Mommies, by Leslea Newman.

A group of 500 parents petitioned the school board against the teacher, Shelley Evans-Marshall, calling for "decency and excellence" in the classroom. The teacher also had various run-ins with her principal. Despite positive performance reviews before the controversy, the principal's evaluations afterwards criticized Evans-Marshall's attitude and demeanor and her "use of material that is pushing the limits of community standards." The school board in March 2002 decided not to renew her contract, citing "problems with communications and teamwork."

Evans-Marshall sued the Tipp City, Ohio, school district and various officials in 2003, alleging that her termination violated her First Amendment free-speech rights. In 2005, she won a ruling from the 6th Circuit that allowed her case to survive a motion to dismiss by the defendants. The court said at that time that it appeared that Evans-Marshall's termination was "due to a public outcry engendered by the assignment of protected material that had been approved by the board." (Education Week reported on that decision here.)

The suit proceeded to discovery until the school district defendants sought summary judgment last year. A federal district court granted the defendants' motion on the grounds that Evans-Marshall could not prove a link between the community outcry and the school board's decision not to renew her.

But while Evans-Marshall's case satisfied two earlier Supreme Court standards on public-employee speech (Pickering and Connick), she could not survive the court's most recent decision in this area: Garcetti v. Ceballos. In Garcetti, decided in 2006, the high court held that public employees do not have First Amendment protection for speech "pursuant to" their official duties.

Friday, October 22, 2010

I'm posting late today due to computer problems. My computer is with the "geek squad" again--for the second time in one week. I had to borrow my husband's MacBook so I could post for Poetry Friday. It's so frustrating being without my computer. I hope I get it back soon. I can't get any writing done!

Friday, October 15, 2010

One of the children’s poetry books nominated for a 2010 Cybils Award is Marilyn Singer’s Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse. I think it is an ingenious and clever collection of fairy tale poems. I LOVE fairy tale poems.

Today, I thought I’d post of three of my own fairy tale poems—which I wrote many years ago. All of the poems are about Snow White’s evil stepmother and mention the magic mirror.

FOR SALE

My magic mirror is for sale.It’s such an awful tattletale!It told me things about my foeI’d really rather never know.I MUST be fairest in the land…Not second best! You understand?I want to be the most divine.My reputation’s on the line!The seven dwarfs? Those little cretins!They should be in the dungeon, beaten.They foiled my plans to kill the lass.I’ve got to sell my looking glassAnd spend the cash on wrinkle cream,A nose job, and a health regime,Two weekends at a beauty spa.Then I’ll look like a movie star.I’ll be the fairest in the land!And Snow White?She can go pound sand!

THE EVIL QUEEN SPEAKS TO HER MAGIC MIRROR

Mirror, mirror on the wall,You say Snow White is best of all.She may be lovely, I’ll agree—But she’s a moron. Can’t you see?Thrice I fooled her she’s so trusting.I think her brain needs readjusting.I’ve never seen her reading books.She only cares about her looks.I’m not as pretty as the kid…But she’s no smarter than a squid.Why, I’ve earned ten advanced degreesFrom seven universities!I’ll change the question. Now I’ll beThe best in this vicinity:Mirror, mirror on the wall,Who’s the SMARTEST one of all?

Q:Who’s the nemesis of Snow White?

A:The wicked queen, with great delight,Concocted schemes to kill the child…But failed. The queen was driven wildEach time her mirror told her thatSnow White survived. “That little bratIs like a cat that has nine lives!I’m second best while she survives.Each trick I’ve tried has been for nought.Now with frustration I am fraught.Snow White the fairest? Poppycock!Her snow white face could stop a clock.”

Friday, October 8, 2010

One Big Rain is one delightful little anthology of poems about rain that takes readers through the year. Its twenty poems are divided equally among the four seasons. Most of the poems are brief; many paint vivid images with their words.

Gray selected several fine haikus for her book—including this one by Sora:

stars on the pond—again, a pitter-patterof winter rain

The illustration that accompanies the poem is beautiful in its quiet simplicity.

In One Big Rain, Gray includes works by well-known poets like Lilian Moore, Eve Merriam, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg—as well as works by poets whose names may not be familiar to many readers( Dixie Willson and Maud E. Uschold). The book also contains two poems translated from other languages (Norwegian and Spanish): Rainby Sigbjorn and The Sower by R. Olivares Figueroa. One of the things I like best about the One Big Rain is finding a few of my favorite weather poems that I haven’t read in anthologies in a long time.

One of those “favorite” poems is Eve Merriam’s Summer Rain. Here’s an excerpt from it:

A tickle, a trickleA million-dot freckleSpeckles the spotted rain.

Like a cinnamonGeraniumSmells the rainingest rain.

And here’s an excerpt from another “favorite”— Lilian Moore’s Weather Report:

Ice-bearing trees,a glassorchard,blinkingsunwinking.

A noonwind willpass,harvesting the brittle crop,crashingclinking.

Children’s poetry doesn’t get much better than that!

Ryan O’Rourke’s stylistic art—done mostly in muted shades of brown, gray, black, and green—is a fine and unassuming complement to this compilation of poems about rain.

Click here to download a poster of the One Big Rain illustration shown above.

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Reading One Big Rain inspired me to go looking through my manuscripts and previous Wild Rose Reader posts for poems that I had written about rain. Here’s what I found:

Rain Poems by Elaine Magliaro

THINGS TO DO IF YOU ARE RAIN

Polka dot sidewalks.Freckle windowpanes.Roll off rooftops and gurgle down gutter spouts.Patter around a porch in silver slippers.Dimple a quiet pond.Tickle tulips and glisten the grass.Tiptoe over silken seas.Look for a lost rainbow.

I like a quiet summer daywhen clouds above are oyster grayand rain falls softer than a sigh.I stand out in the melting skycool water washing over me.I’m a pearl all shimmery,rough shell unhinged and opened wideletting all the sea inside.

Friday, October 1, 2010

I know I haven’t been posting as often as I used to—or writing many book reviews lately. I’ve had lots of things on my mind and some family matters to attend to in recent months. My creative juices are bit low at the moment and my ability to focus on things of a literary nature is not at an optimum level. I do hope things will return to normal soon.

Today, I selected a poem that I wrote for an unpublished collection called Sweet Dreams. As this is the season of county fairs around my neck of the woods, I think there will be lots of kids eating cotton candy…as well as candied apples, fried dough, and other low-calorie foods.

About Me

I worked as an elementary school teacher for more than three decades and as a school librarian for three years. I also taught a children's literature course at Boston University from 2002-2008. I served on the advisory board of the Keene State College Children’s Literature Festival from 2006-2008 and as a member of the NCTE Poetry Committee from 2009-2012. I am now retired and write poetry for children. "Things to Do," my first children's book, will be published by Chronicle Books in February of 2017.